Thomas Taylor (neoplatonist)

For other people named Thomas Taylor, see Thomas Taylor (disambiguation).

Thomas Taylor (15 May 1758 - 1 November 1835) was an English translator and Neoplatonist, the first to translate into English the complete works of Aristotle and of Plato, as well as the Orphic fragments.

Portrait of Thomas Taylor by Sir Thomas Lawrence, about 1812, from the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. In the background the Acropolis of Athens is silhouetted against a fiery sky, and by Taylor's left hand is a copy of his translation of the works of Plato.

Biography

Born in London, Taylor was educated at St. Paul's School, and devoted himself to the study of the classics and of mathematics. After first working as a clerk in Lubbock's Bank, he was appointed Assistant Secretary to the Society for the Encouragement of Art (precursor to the Royal Society of Arts), in which capacity he made many influential friends, who furnished the means for publishing his various translations, which besides Plato and Aristotle, include Proclus, Porphyry, Apuleius, Ocellus Lucanus and other Neoplatonists and Pythagoreans. His aim was the translation of all the untranslated writings of the ancient Greek philosophers.

Taylor was an admirer of Hellenism, most especially in the philosophical framework furnished by Plato and the Neoplatonists Proclus and the "most divine" Iamblichus, whose works he translated into English. So enamoured was he of the ancients, that he and his wife talked to one another only in classical Greek.

He was also an outspoken voice against corruption in the Christianity of his day, and its shallowness. Taylor was ridiculed and acquired many enemies, but in other quarters he was well received. Among his friends was the eccentric traveller and philosopher John "Walking" Stewart, whose gatherings Taylor was in the habit of attending.

Taylor married his childhood sweetheart Mary Morton in 1777, and they had four sons, George Burrow Taylor, John Buller Taylor, William Grainger Taylor and Thomas Taylor, and a daughter, Mary Meredith Taylor. His wife died in 1809. He married again, and his second wife Susannah died in 1823. From his second marriage he had one son, Thomas Proclus Taylor.

Influence

The texts that he used had been edited since the 16th century, but were interrupted by lacunae; Taylor's understanding of the Platonists informed his suggested emendations. His translations were influential on William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Wordsworth. In American editions they were read by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, and G. R. S. Mead, secretary to Mme Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy.

Taylor also published several original works on philosophy (in particular, the Neoplatonism of Proclus and Iamblichus) and mathematics. These works have been republished (some for the first time since Taylor's lifetime) by Prometheus Trust.

It appears that he and his wife were landlords at Walworth in the late 1770s to a family that included the 18 year old Mary Wollstonecraft; it is not clear whether the future author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman actually knew the Taylors, as at that age she left home for a job as a lady's companion. Wollstonecraft's 1792 magnum opus inspired Taylor to write his satirical A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes: if women have rights, why not animals too?

List of works

Among his translations are:

• The Mystical Hymns of Orpheus (1787)
• Plato (1804)
• Aristotle (1806–12)
• The Life of Pythagoras by Iamblichus (1818)
• Apuleius; Celsus; Iamblichus; Julian; Maximus Tyrius; Pausanias; Plotinus; Porphyry; and Proclus

Among his miscellanies are:

• A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes (1792)
• A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes (1792) Modern transcription with photographs
• The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries: a dissertation (c.1790). Amsterdam [i.e. London]; later editions, edited, and reprinted variously. (Fourth Edition, 1891)
• Theoretic Arithmetic (1816)

References

• W. E. A. Axon, Thomas Taylor, The Platonist (London, 1890)
• Gordon, Lyndall. Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. Great Britain: Virago, 2005. ISBN 1-84408-141-9.
• Kathleen Raine, Thomas Taylor the Platonist; Selected Writings, 1969.
• 1944 essay in Shrine of Wisdom magazine. "Emerson on Thomas Taylor and the Platonists". No author. Full text here
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J. M. Dent & Sons; New York, E. P. Dutton.
• The Life of Thomas Taylor, essay by Manly P. Hall

External links

Online works

• Works by Thomas Taylor at Project Gutenberg.
• Thomas Taylor, The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, 1791.
• Thomas Taylor, A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes, 1792.

Translations

• Hymns of Orpheus, 1792.
• Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, 1821.
• Julian the Apostate, Two Orations of the Emperor Julian, 1793.
• Sallustius, On the Gods and the World.

Proclus

• The Six Books of Proclus, the Platonic Successor, on the Theology of Plato.
• Fragments That Remain of the Lost Writings of Proclus.
• Commentary on Plato's "Timaeus".
• Ten Doubts Concerning Providence and On the Existence of Evil.

Porphyry

• Select works of Porphyry: Containing his four books On abstinence from animal food; his treatise On the Homeric cave of the nymphs; and his Auxiliaries to the perception of intelligible natures, 1823:
  • On Abstinence from Animal Food (De Abstinentia):
    • Book I
    • Book II
    • Book III
    • Book IV
  • On the Cave of the Nymphs (De Antro Nympharum).
  • Auxiliaries to the Perception of Intelligible Natures.

Biographical resources

•  "Taylor, Thomas (1758-1835)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. 
• Complete list of original works and translations by Thomas Taylor, compiled by Ruth Balch
• The Prometheus Trust
• The Prometheus Trust: "Thomas Taylor, the English Platonist"
• Criticism of Taylor's translations of Platonicism
• Thomas Taylor, a great English Platonist Short biography and bibliography: The Shrine of Wisdom
• The Thomas Taylor Series Main Catalogue from the Prometheus Trust